Home First
by Hisa-Ai
Summary: Before Camelot, there had been Ealdor.


**For Day 3 of bbcmerlinfest over on tumblr. Favorite Location.**

**Disclaimer: **Ah, you know me: I don't own _anything. _

* * *

_Home First_

* * *

*.*.*.*.*

Camelot might have been home for Merlin _now, _but, before Camelot, there had been Ealdor. Ealdor where he had grown up, where his mother was, where Will had once been, where some of his most treasured, nostalgia surrounded memories were. In a small village such as Ealdor, everyone knew everyone and everything, and every tiny part of the village had a memory or two attached to it—whether it was a good memory… or a bad one.

There was the field Will was burned in, for example. Before it came to hold such a sad memory, it had been where they would play in their childhood. They would sneak off after finishing their chores and, even though their mothers could see them from the village, they would play games of soldiers and secrets, fantasy and magic, as though the adults didn't matter in the least. They were joined by other children, back before they were of the opinion that the pair of them were weird and couldn't play with them anymore, and they made up games and it was wonderful and something _normal_, the field itself magical and flat and bumpy and soaked with imaginary blood and dreams, the grass a whole new world beneath their feet, the sky a pleasant sort of blanket of understanding and acceptance that somehow became lost to them as they grew older.

The woods Merlin chopped their wood from was where he and Will took their refuge when they grew and others their age decided they couldn't play soldiers and secrets anymore; people as weird as Merlin and Will should not be afforded the luxury of fantasy and magic, they said, when they would say anything at all. But Merlin, they didn't know, had the only sort of magic there was ever supposed to be, and tucked into those woods, he and Will painted the trees with that magic. In those moments, it was just the pair of them with laughter and jokes and nonsensical talks and a forest that was _so much more_ than just a forest when they were there, streaking through the trees with a special sort of innocence and wonder that wasn't meant to survive to their later years.

The slanted roofs of the houses were their punishments whenever they got into trouble. Indeed, all the boys in the village were made to work on them, fix them, sometimes put together entirely new ones, whenever they were caught by whomever in the village doing something they shouldn't have been doing in the first place. In those moments, the boys had an unspoken bond, any animosity lost to sweat and toiling and hard work that they wouldn't have opted for if given the choice. And those who _would_ have opted for it were sent to work in the fields instead, the villagers knowing enough about each of the boys to know which punishment would _be_ punishment.

The fields where their food was grown was what it was. Forbidden from their games, the only thing to guarantee their survival—and what fickle things they _were_, stubborn and needing constant care, the work never quite _done_. But what could they do about it? It was their food; without it, they would surely starve, and so they tended and toiled and dealt with its fickleness, seeing to every need of the fields as though their very lives depended on it—because they _did_.

The road into and through the village was well-worn, the dirt and gravel under-foot something of a constant, familiar and somehow soothing to Merlin when he was made to travel among it. Ghosts of memories of stinging knees and elbows from where he and William had fallen a few too many times, in their running and horse-playing with one another, kept him company whenever he was out on it alone, or surrounded by those who liked to pretend he didn't exist if they could help it.

Indeed, from the patch of thorn bushes Will had once caught his arm on and ripped off a good chunk of his skin—which had left him with _quite_ the nasty scar that had lasted until the end of his days—to the old tree stump in the middle of the woods where the boys liked to take the girls they fancied—for either some necking or teasing, depending on the sort of boy they _were_—all of Ealdor was filled with memories, pleasant and terrible and wonderful and heartbreaking all at once. Merlin might not have been the most accepted of people there, but he had been one of them, nonetheless, born and raised by a woman all in the village seemed to love, so it was…

_Home._

Ealdor was _home. _It wasn't always pleasant, and Merlin was sure there were those who would be happy to never see him there again—indeed, the only things left for him there were his mother, and the sweet memories of a blissful sort of childhood before it turned into a murky and secretive sort of adolescence—but it was still… _home. _Still a _sort_ of home, anyway, a place he had needed to leave to truly find his footing in the world. But he would be forever grateful for the things it had taught him, what it had once meant to him.

Because it would always be _home_. Even though Camelot was his home now, even though Gaius and Arthur and Gwen and all his friends in Camelot were as much home as Ealdor was… Ealdor had been his home first. And he would never forget it or the memories and lessons it had given him to weigh him down for a lifetime.

*.*.*.*.*


End file.
